zwolanerd

Spell check keeps telling me that “videogames” isn’t one word, but I’m still the boss around here, spell check, so you can stick it up your nose.

An end-of-the-year list of games suffers the most at my hands, compared to any other list. Games are the most expensive things and I tend to not buy games when they first come out, choosing instead to wait til they’re available used or at substantial discounts. I’ve tried to tell game makers that I’d be way more willing to try games I’ve never heard of if the entry point was $20 or so, but they don’t listen to me. So until such time as that happens, my lists will be limited to the few games I played this year.

I played many more games than this, but most of them were from 2013, and I’m choosing to limit the selection to this year’s crop. There were several more games released this year that I intend to play at some point (Lego Hobbit and Shadows of Mordor, for instance), but they aren’t cheap enough yet.

So here’s my list of games I played this year in the order I enjoyed them, from least to most. All of them were on XBox One unless otherwise noted.

14. Super Time Force – This was a free download for XBox Gold members. I played it for maybe for maybe 10 minutes before I remembered how much I dislike platformers.

13. Alien: Isolation – I’m sure it’s a better game than I’m giving it credit for, but I’m several hours into it and I’m just so not interested in it. I really like the Alien movies, so I don’t know what the disconnect is here.

12. Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition – Another free platformer via XBox Gold, but this one I played all the way through (even though it frustrated me at times oh so very much. The style of this game was unique and beautiful, and it was quite funny.

11. The Lego Movie Videogame – I liked it, but it was pretty much just a straight rehash of the movie.

10. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – Frustrating controls and camera at times, but it’s still Spidey swinging around, beating people up, and collecting things.

9. Assassin’s Creed Unity – Better than III, and very beautiful, but that’s all I can say for it.

8. The Wolf Among Us – This game got me into reading the Fables comics they’re based on, which aren’t necessarily required to enjoy the game, but the game and the comics each helped me appreciate the other more.

7. The Walking Dead: Season Two – Just some fantastic storytelling here, guys, I’m not even kidding. Poor Clem :(

6. Watch Dogs – One-button hacking is the wave of the future, and I am hanging ten. (That’s surfing lingo, for you young kids out there who might not know.)

5. Minecraft – You might not think this is a new game, but it was newly released on the XBox One this year so it counts. It turns out I really, really like digging quarries. Building stuff? eh, not so much.

4. [Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham] – This one’s in brackets because I have bought it but I haven’t played it yet. I have a pretty good idea that this is where it would fit, though. Once I’ve played it (next year) I’ll let you know how my guess was (my guess is that my guess is pretty close to being right).

3. Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD (XBox 360) – After the Ezio series, this is my favorite Assassin’s Creed game. It’s smaller in scale, but I really took to the setting, the storyline, and Aveline de Grandpré.

2. Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition – Here’s how much I liked this game: I had already bought and played through it on the XBox 360 the previous year, but I bought and played through it again on the XBox One because I loved it so much.

1. Dragon Age: Inquisition – My saved game currently says I’ve put 250+ hours into this game, but that’s because there’s some kind of glitch that counts time when the game is minimized. Honestly, though? This is exactly the sort of game I could put 250+ hours into.

Tags: Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age, Lego, Tomb Raider, XB1, Xbox

Written by: Mark